This WordPress.com site is the cat’s pajamas

Chronic Radiation Syndrome

Draft. Editing and correction in progress.

The claim that Australian nuclear veterans suffer enhanced risk of cancer has been confirmed by the Australian Government only as recently as 2006. The official government position is that the enhanced risk suffered by the nuclear test veterans is shown in health survey results. However the Australian government refuses to acknowledge that radiation exposures due to the testing of nuclear weapons as the cause of this increased risk.

Scientists under contract to the Australian government located at Adelaide performed the analysis of the 2006 health survey results. These scientists initially suggested that exposure to petrol fumes in the Australian desert might be the cause of the increased cancer risk suffered by nuclear veterans.

This suggestion, present in the Health Survey draft report, did not make it into the final report. Instead, we are presented with a mystery. Though the scientists claim certainty in their position that the nuclear veterans’ exposure to nuclear weapons detonations was not the cause of their increased cancer risk, the scientists are unable to find any other cause.

It’s a mystery, apparently, to Australian science in the service of the State. Not that this is uniquely Australian. It is universal among the Nuclear Powers. (It is all the more perplexing given Dr. P. Couch’s compassionate and detailed submission to a Senate inquiry examining the impact of the British Nuclear Tests in Australia on the personnel involved. Dr. Couch’s submission described the suffering endured by Commonwealth Police personnel who guarded the Maralinga Nuclear Test Site after military activity had ceased. One would have logically thought that if personnel were affected by service at Maralinga in times after the cessation of weapons testing, then so were the military personnel who actually saw the bombs explode, and who saw the plutonium dust disperse during the “minor trials”. )

The report states:

“The cancer incidence study showed an overall increase in the number of cancers in test
participants, similar to that found in the mortality study. The number of cancer cases
found among participants was 2456, which was 23% higher than expected. A significant
increase in both the number of deaths and the number of cases was found for (figures in
brackets show increase in mortality and incidence):

Other findings included:
of the 26 mesothelioma cases in test participants, 16 occurred in RAN personnel,
which was nearly three times the number expected.
In RAAF personnel, there was nearly double the expected number of deaths from
melanoma, and cases of melanoma were increased by two–thirds.

The free cancer treatment granted to the nuclear veterans by the Australian government as a result of the demonstrated increased risk and incidence of cancers, given that the government denies any causal relationship between the cancer hazard and the events which created the nuclear veteran cohort, is seen as an act of grace rather than the cut price dereliction of duty by government that it actually is.

However, the cancers described are not the only conditions suffered by nuclear veterans.

Many nuclear veterans have suffered chronic ill over many decades. Various organ systems are involved. A vulnerability to illness and fatigue seems to me to be a hallmark of these of veterans.

It should be remembered that the peak years for the deaths of nuclear veterans were the mid 1980s. Many nuclear veterans were conscripts. They were young, in their late teens and twenties. The mid 1980s seems too early a date for the peak years of death of these men.

The concept of a Chronic Radiation Syndrome was first reported by Japanese doctors who observed survivors of the atomic bombs dropped upon Japan in 1945. There, the name for the syndrome is Bura Bura disease. It is not accepted by the West. The USSR first identified CRS in 1954. (A K Gusʹkova; Grigoriĭ Davidovich Baĭsogolov). The USSR first reported this in an open publication in 1971. (Radiation sickness in man (outlines) [by] A. K. Gus’kova and G. D. Baysogolov.
Author: A K Gusʹkova; G D Baĭsogolov Publisher: Moscow, Meditsina, 1971.)

At the same time as the US government published, for government use, the Soviet work which described, among other syndromes and conditions, Chronic Radiation Syndrome, the US authorities were also busy denying justice in courts to American Downwinders who suffered multiple system disorders (as well as cancers) which produced debilitating chronic illness of a long lasting, intractable nature.

Carole Gallagher describes the metabolic and endocrine system disorders suffered by many women from the 1950s who were resident in high fallout states down wind of the Nevada Test Site.

I have searched for a copy of “Radiation sickness in man (outlines)”, either the original Soviet, 1971, edition, or the 1973 US AEC duplicate publication, for some time without success and have finally found a copy.

Here are some pages from it:

The above text shows that the USA was in possession of the 1971 Soviet description of Chronic Radiation Syndrome in 1973 at the latest. The publication notes state that publication was undertaken in order to fulfill the needs of US governmental agencies. It was not a classified text. It appears to me that the book was not promoted on the open market. The World Catalog of Books lists the Library of Congress and an Air Force Base as being among the few libraries to hold the title in the USA.

(However, if my memory serves me correctly, I believe that I read sections from this book in 1971 in the course of my duties. That 1971 Soviet edition being printed in Moscow in English. The book had a green hard back cover. Perhaps it was not the same book. I can’t be sure.)

In 1994 the US Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute Bethesda, Maryland, published “Analysis of Chronic Radiation Sickness Cases in the Population of the Southern Urals”. The citation for this work reads:
” Accession Number : ADA286238
Title : Analysis of Chronic Radiation Sickness Cases in the Population of the Southern Urals
Descriptive Note : Contract rept.
Corporate Author : ARMED FORCES RADIOBIOLOGY RESEARCH INST BETHESDA MD
Personal Author(s) : Kossenko, M. M. ; Akleyev, A. A. ; Degteva, M. O. ; Kozheurov, V. P. ; Degtyaryova, R. G.
Full Text : http://www.dtic.mil/get-tr-doc/pdf?AD=ADA286238
Report Date : AUG 1994
Pagination or Media Count : 94
Abstract : This report was prepared for the Defense Nuclear Agency under contract number DNAOO1-92-M-0658. The report is based on information obtained from a 40-year follow-up of people exposed to radiation due to discharges of radioactive waste from an industrial facility, the Mayak Production Association, into the Techa-Iset river system. The results of the medical follow-up have been described in a number of articles published in scientific journals in Russia. This report summarizes dosimetric and medical data within the framework of deterministic effects and, in particular, chronic radiation sickness (CRS). From 1952 to 1961, 940 people out of 28,000 exposed to radiation in the riverside communities on the Techa were diagnosed as having CRS. Conditions of exposure are described, irradiation dose computations are presented, and the clinical picture of CRS is characterized.

This work was written by Russian staff of the Urals Research Center for Radiation Medicine (URCRM) under a contract awarded by the US military.

The authors of “Radiation in Man (Outlines)”, 1971, were also members of the Urals Research Centre for Radiation Medicine. In 1971 URCRM was a secret Soviet Institute. The URCRM states: “Since 1955 Urals Research Center for Radiation Medicine (URCRM) has been providing health services for the population affected by low dose rate radiation exposure due to radiation accidents at the Mayak Production Association (Mayak PA) (discharges of radioactive wastes into the Techa River, explosion of the radioactive waste storage and formation of the East Urals Radioactive Trace (EURT), etc.) and has been conducting research to provide radiation safety for the population.” (Urals Research Centre for Radiation Medicine website at http://www.urcrm.ru/en/general-info/general-information

As we have seen, the Soviet research unit in the Urals communicated findings relating to Chronic Radiation Syndrome to the West in 1971.

The Hiroshima doctors had communicated relevant and similar findings to the USA in September 1945.

Neither of these communications resulted in Western nation placing Chronic Radiation Syndrome into the medical lexicon.

From the 1950s, nuclear veterans and civilian Downwinders reported syndromes of ill health similar to Chronic Radiation Syndrome to their governments. This includes the government of the USA and the government of Australia. These reports certainly did not result in Chronic Radiation Syndrome entering the Western medical lexicon.

Pdf page 6 of “Analysis of Chronic Radiation Sickness Cases in the Population of the Southern Urals” reads as follows:
The preface to the publication, of which pdf page 6 above is a part, was authored by Dr G.I. Reeves of the US Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute.

The Soviet Union and then Russia did not disclose to the world the protracted contamination of Mayak and its surroundings nor the two sudden releases of large quantities of high level nuclear waste until 1989, we have seen that the USSR did disclose the existence of Chronic Radiation Syndrome to the world in 1971.

The US Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute has had an interest in Chronic Radiation Syndrome, apparently, only since 1989. Any earlier interest in the syndrome by the institute did not result in Chronic Radiation Syndrome entering the Western medical lexicon.

“The term, chronic radiation sickness (CRS), introduced by the Russian scientists A. K. Guskova, G.
D. Baysogolov, and others, proceeded from the necessity to designate a specific term for a disease
that was diagnosed in several hundred workers of the Mayak industrial complex. The same diagnosis was made for 940 residents of the riverside villages on the Techa river, into which high-level wastes
from the Mayak plant had been dumped from 1949 through 1956. During the 40-year period of operations at Mayak, all studies on radiation exposure of personnel at the plant and of the off-site population, the doses of exposure, and the possible health effects from radiation exposure were classified for national security reasons”. (“Analysis of Chronic Radiation Sickness Cases in the Population of the Southern Urals”).

Despite the classification of the cohort information, the identification, description, diagnosis and treatment of Chronic Radiation Syndrome by A. K. Guskova and G.D. Baysogolov was described to the world in 1971 in the Soviet publication “Radiation Sickness in Man (Outlines), Moscow, republished in 1973 by the US Atomic Energy Commission.

Given that by 1971 in the USA nuclear veterans and Downwinders had been pursuing justice for conditions similar to, or the same as, Chronic Radiation Syndrome for 2 decades, it is reasonable to assume an intense interest in the Soviet disclosures at that time. Both the AEC and later the DOE, it seems to me, had a duty to report as widely as possible, through government information and private media outlets, the identification of a radiogenic chronic syndrome relevant to US nuclear victims.

This did not, of course, happen. The 1989 disclosures came way to late for many, and still, by 1994, Chronic Radiation Syndrome had not been entered into the Western medical lexicon.

The 1994 publication specifically refers to “The authors of the clinical classification of
various forms of radiation sickness in the USSR were A. K. Guskova and G. D. Baysogolov [ 19,20.]” with the references as follows: “20. Guskova AK, Baysogolov GD (1971) Radiation diseases in humans. Moscow, p 387”.

The 1994 publication states: “A. K. Guskova and G. D. Baysogolov [20] gave the following
definition of the notion of CRS: “Chronic radiation sickness is a complex, clearly outlined
clinical syndrome occurring as a result of the long-term exposure of the organism to radiation, single
or total doses of which regularly exceed the dose permissible for professional exposure.” This definition does not quantitate the permissible irradiation for plant personnel. According to the radiation safety standards adopted in the USSR, these were different at different times….

“Chronic radiation sickness is characterized by a certain dynamics of the clinical course
directly related to.radiation load formation, a combination of slow build-up of radiation affections and signs of compensatory processes and adaptive reactions. Individual symptoms and even clinical
syndromes are not characteristic exclusively of radiation sickness but their sequence
may be considered as a characteristic feature allowing to distinguish chronic radiation sickness as a separate clinical entity. As a rule, a correct, well grounded diagnosis of chronic radiation sickness
caused by general irradiation does not present a great difficulty and may be
established at any therapeutic or prophylactic institution.” (pdf page 29)

The question is this: what made CRS so hard to Identify and diagnosis in the West in the period since 1945? After all, having observed and characterized the syndrome, Soviet science considered that any relevant institution was capable of the diagnosis of CRS, and from it’s point of view, that included even Western ones.

The Japanese doctors from September 1945, however, found that the West was not at all interested in a diagnosis of Chronic Radiation Syndrome, or, as those doctors termed it, Bura Bura disease.

For the Western nuclear states it seems to have taken many decades of willful blindness in fact to produce the contemporary result in this matter.

“Concepts of Diagnosis of Chronic Radiation Sickness . However, the difficulties in
Terminological aspects. The question of CRS as being a separate clinical entity has not yet been resolved by organized medicine. In the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) [13] and the Guide to International Statistical Classification of Diseases, Trauma, and Death Causes [141, radiation effects and their early reactions and late manifestations are listed in the section devoted to accidents, poisoning, and trauma, but no mention is made of CRS. Up-dated versions of the ICD take into account new achievements in medical science such as the discovery of previously unknown etiologic factors of some diseases (for example, AIDS) but do not contain term “chronic radiation sickness.” The oversight may be due to the fact that nowhere else but in Russia did such prolonged effects of significant rates of ionizing radiation occur in man, with a more or less uniform dose distribution in the body resulting in the development of a pathological process. At that time, priority was given to keeping secret the fact that an off-site population was being
exposed for several years to an open source of ionizing radiation at considerable rates.”
(“Analysis of Chronic Radiation Sickness Cases in the Population of the Southern Urals”, pdf page 28.)

The are members of cohorts resident within areas other than the territories of the former Soviet Union who would vigorously dispute the claim that exposures of the type which results in Chronic Radiation Syndrome in civilian populations exist only within the territories of the former USSR!!!

Many former on-site personnel resident in the West would seem to me to be of the same mind as well.

The scientific admissions of Western governments in relation to the field of Health Physics and radio biology and medicine were and are as constrained in the post World War 2 era as Soviet science was during the Cold War.

It is for this reason, I maintain, that it took 3 decades to hold a Royal Commission in Australia into the conduct and effects of the British Nuclear Weapons Tests in Australia. It is for this reason that it took 4 decades to clean up Maralinga Nuclear Test Site. It is for this reason that it took 5 decades to hold and conclude the health survey of Australian nuclear veterans.

In the interim years, anyone who spoke of the reality of disease and disablement suffered by those afflicted by the nuclear weapons tests in Australia were subject to threats of imprisonment by government and to attempts of censorship by the British and Australian authorities (Marsden, cited in Cross). It took 3 decades for the Australian government to release nuclear veterans from the threat of legal action and imprisonment if they spoke.

In the USA, the fact is that over a period of a decade, from the 1950s to 1962, 100 nuclear weapons tests deposited nuclear effluent over the “high fallout states” of the USA which were equal to the emissions of 4 Chernobyl reactor failures. This then is a chronic dosing of a large off site population outside of the USSR. The nuclear adventure came to be known as the process of “Killing our own” (Wasserman).

The blatant dishonesty of Western nuclear authorities during and since the nuclear weapons test era is plain today for all to see. Members of the US government took years to consider what level of compensation to the US Downwinder population was nationally affordable. Today the scheme of compensation, a pittance, is administered by the US Department of Justice.

In the matter of the US variant of Chronic Radiation Syndrome, it is plain that the reality of the appearance of the symptoms and signs of the syndrome within individuals should be the trigger for consideration for diagnosis RATHER THAN ANY MEASURED DOSE AND DOSE RATE – FOR THESE DID NOT ADEQUATELY OCCUR AT THE TIME OF THE ACTIONS BY GOVERNMENT WHICH CAUSED THE AFFLICTIONS.

The same holds true for affected Australians. Except that, despite the evidence, the Australian government denies to this day any casual relationship between radiation exposure from bomb tests and resultant radio-genic disease in the exposed cohort. It is a self serving situation of denial by authorities.

I would remind the medicos and scientists of the world that it is the patient who reports symptoms, not the medico. No nuclear authority is my doctor unless I give consent. Anything else is medical experimentation. It is the medico who makes diagnosis and every patient has the right to subsequent and differing diagnosis. The idea that government authorities should make diagnosis of people who are in fact the victims of government radiological adventures is an existential threat to democracy. In this context the concept of dose is a medico-legal one which is used in the attempt by government to absolve its responsibility and limit its legal liability.

Such are the barriers to the acceptance of Chronic Radiation Syndrome by Western authorities.

It must be pointed out that Australian Aboriginal people have been excluded from three health surveys of affected populations. It is in this light that the Aboriginal people’s legal action in London against the British government should be seen. In 2013 the British government compelled by various means, the plaintiff’s lawyers to withdraw from the case. The fundamental claim by authorities was that insufficient evidence existed upon which to proceed. The lawyers involved have apparently been busy with government work ever since.

A reasonable person would ask upon what basis did the British and Australian authorities prevent the collection of evidence relevant to the Australian Aboriginal cohort in the first place, second place and third place?

The Minister in charge of the last instance of exclusion, 2006, Bruce Billson, emailed his response to this question to me. The government did not know the names and addresses of the Aboriginal people involved and so, despite previous promises of inclusion entered into Commonwealth Hansard in 2001, the people were excluded from the survey.

Ignorance is a call to research Minister. It is not a reason for this third exclusion of Australian Aboriginal people from access to redress via legal remedy. Nor is it a basis from which to deny a process of legal discovery of evidence. Had the people been included in the surveys, the data gathered may have proven to be quite costly in it’s legal result for the authorities.

We may never see the truth being found by government. The road to such an ignorant outcome since 1952 has been quite complex, and very able authorities have been in charge of the process of official ignorance over many years. Both in Australia and in England.

Other impediments to the Western discovery and description of Chronic Radiation Syndrome date from 1945, and consist of political rather than medical considerations. Over the decades since that time the need to avoid international odium the partners who collaborated in the Manhattan Project took precedence over the advancement of science in this matter. (See The Franck Report, full text: http://www.dannen.com/decision/franck.html)

Throughout this nuclear history, no Western authority admitted that chronic “low level” exposure caused any chronic health syndrome. But the reality of such a syndrome was first seen in Japan. The syndrome, named Bura Bura disease, has been diagnosed, treated and explained since 1945 by a Japanese doctor name Dr. Hida. Dr Hida provides a brief description in Account of a Medical Doctor Who Had to Face Innumerable Deaths of Victims from the Exposure to A- bomb Radiation, http://afsc.org/sites/afsc.civicactions.net/files/documents/Shuntaro%20Hida,%20Japan.pdf

This document is reproduced in full below:

“Account of a Medical Doctor Who Had to Face Innumerable Deaths of Victims
from the Exposure to A-bomb Radiation, Shuntaro Hida Medical Doctor and A-bomb Sufferer of Hiroshima
Director, Hibakusha Counseling CenterJapan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers’ Organizations.

“In 1945, I was working as an army surgeon at the Hiroshima Army Hospital. Early in the
morning on August 6 I left home to see a patient in Hesaka Village located 6 km from Hiroshima
City. Thus I happened to escape from the death by the A-bombing. For more than 50 years since
I was engaged in the emergency medical treatment of the victims (Hibakusha) almost immediately after the explosion, I have worked to treat A-bomb sufferers. Based on my experience, I want to report on the deaths of those killed by nuclear weapons, hoping that it will help promote the movement for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

“1. The A-bomb radiation kills humans in two ways: 1) High-level radiation released by
explosion pierces the human body from the outside and destroys many organs simultaneously,
causing death to victims, and 2) radiation from radioactive substances taken in the human body
turns oxygen molecules in bodily fluid into activated oxygen, which in turn damages
chromosomes in cells, resulting in diseases and subsequent death.

“Within a few days of the bombing, many people died after exhibiting such violent symptoms
as high fever, diarrhea, vomiting, bleeding from mucous membranes, vomiting blood, bloody
stool, and gangrene of palatal membranes. This continued for months. Dr. Juan Amano’s theory
explains why some symptoms appeared later than others—why some Hibakusha dies
immediately, while others did not suffer these symptoms for months: Neutrons released as
radiation from the A-bomb turned the phosphorus in bones and the brain into radioactive
phosphorus, which irradiated and damaged the body cells from within. (Research report of the
Science Council of Japan “Report 1-4 of A-bomb Disorders) It was not until 1973 when
Canadian doctor Abram Petkau announced that low-level radiation was more destructive to cell
membranes than high-level radiation that the scientific analysis on the disorders caused by
internal exposure to residual radioactivity became possible.

“(3) Deaths from chronic symptoms (ranging from A-bomb Bura-bura disease to leukemia,
cancer, multiple tumors of bone marrow). In 1946, many Hibakusha began to suffer A-bomb Bura-
bura disease. Patients became lethargic, easily fatigued, and impatient, even as they seemed clinically normal. They easily caught colds and, once they did, they took a long time to recover. This condition made it difficult for them to continue working and degraded their already poor living condition. There were many cases in which patients caught a slight cold and then, quite suddenly developed a fatal case of tuberculosis. The doctors had to be very careful in treating the A-
bomb Bura-bura disease.

“In 1946, Leukemia began attacking the Hibakusha. The number of those who developed the
disease gradually increased and reached its peak in 1953 -54. A little later, other forms of cancer
ravaged the Hibakusha. Surveys show that the rate of cancer death of the Hibakusha is higher
than that of non-Hibakusha. (According to a survey in Saitama prefecture in 1987, 5 of the
deaths of Hibakusha (58%) were caused by cancer.) Surviving Hibakusha fear cancer the most.
Myeloma (multiple tumors of the bone marrow) does not occur frequently in the general
population. But among the Hibakusha, myeloma is not uncommon. Due to its frequency among
Hibakusha, it is listed as one of the radiation-induced diseases in the Hibakusha Aid Law. The
disease is much feared by the Hibakusha, as it is quickly fatal.

“(4) Deaths caused by the lowering of immunity function and healing ability:
The Hibakusha as well as non-Hibakusha contract adult and other chronic diseases as they get
older. However, even with proper treatment and health care in their daily lives, the Hibakusha
have more cases of unstable conditions and complications than the general public. Their
conditions tend to suddenly deteriorate, leading to unexpected death in many cases.

“(5) Notion of nuclear deterrence is wrong: The nuclear deterrence doctrine, which regards
the possession of nuclear arms as useful means to deter nuclear war, suggests that the mere possession of nuclear weapons is safe and harmless. Maintaining those nuclear weapons, without ever using them, still requires that they frequently updated and that new weapons be developed. In every stage of nuclear development process, from mining and refining of uranium, production of warheads, their stockpile and transportation to the disposal of nuclear waste, Hibakusha are created by residual radioactivity.

“Nuclear deterrence theory can boast a new generation of Hibakusha who suffer with radiation-
induced diseases and who will not appear in official records. We must not overlook the fact that the practice of deterrence has been lulling international and national opinion on the abolition of nuclear weapons into a false sense of security.

“(6) Nuclear arms trigger a new war:
The wars in Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf, waged after World War II, all began with the
conviction that the war could be won in the long run through the threat of nuclear weapons. If
there had not been nuclear weapons, the decision to start the Gulf War could not have been made
so easily. Nuclear arms do not prevent war. On the contrary, they increase the temptation to start
a war.

“(7) Conclusion:
The elimination of nuclear weapons is the only guarantee for the survival of humankind.” end quote.

American authorities attached to General Farrell’s Manhattan Engineering District detachment in Japan received such reports in 1945 with little interest:

“The Japanese doctors reminded the ABCC investigators that it had rained after the detonations. Dr. Ymazaki asked if the rain had been black and Dr. Odachi said he thought it was. Dr Sugihara remembered, “It was as though looking through a veil. One could gaze and clearly define the outline of the sun without feeling the glare”. (Source: Roff, Sue, “Hotspots: The Legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki”, Cassell, 1995, pp 111.).

While the achievements of 1989 and 1994 as documented by the ARMED FORCES RADIOBIOLOGY RESEARCH INST BETHESDA MD in conjunction with the Urals Research Center for Radiation Medicine, as described within the text “Analysis of Chronic Radiation Sickness Cases in the Population of the Southern Urals”, 1994, are noteworthy, similar results regarding the Western identification and understanding of Chronic Radiation Syndrome could have been achieved in the 1940s had Western authorities listened to Japanese medical experts such as Ymazaki, Odachi, Hida and others.

The disclosures of Medvedev in these matters is important in order to gauge the true chronology of events regarding these matters since at least 1973.

In 1973 a Soviet geneticist and biochemist named Zhores A. Medvedev came to live in England. His visit had been approved by the government of the USSR but during his stay in England, his Soviet citizenship was revoked. In 1976 New Scientist magazine invited Medvedev to write articles about science, and the role of science, in the Soviet Union. (Medvedev, Z.A., “Nuclear Disaster in the Urals”, Angus and Robertson Publishers, ISBN 0 207 95896 3, 1979, PP 3-8.)

New Scientist subsequently published two articles by Medvedev. The first was entitled “Two Decades of Soviet Dissidence”, New Scientist, vol 72, no. 1025 (1976), pp 264- 267. The second was “Facts behind the Soviet Nuclear Disaster”, New Scientist, vol 74, no 1058, (1977), pp 761 – 764.

The information contained in the two articles regarded the explosion of nuclear waste in the Ural region of the USSR. The articles described the health effects caused by this accident, which Medvedev claimed occurred in “1957 or 1958″.

As soon as the articles were published, Medvedev came under attack from the British nuclear establishment. Nuclear authorities in France, USA, and “many other countries” joined in the expert chorus of denial; impatient refutation was unanimous. Medevdev was wrong, these world nuclear authorities wrote, and was he publishing “rubbish”.

Medvedev writes: “This challenge to my veracity was what prompted me to do my subsequent research on the subject, I consider it appropriate to cite the text of the interview [with the Chair of the UK Atomic Energy Authority, Sir John Hill] just as it appeared in the [London] Times [November 8, 1976.] (ibid, pp 4 – 5.) Medvedev was writing these words in 1979, three years after the first of his articles had been published in New Scientist, and three years after the ink frenzy engaged in by World Nuclear Experts in rebuttal.

Clearly, Dr Medvedev had been upset by the international attack he suffered in 1976. Thirty eight years after he uttered the words, here again is Sir John Hill’s rebuttal of Dr. Zhores A. Medvedev, in full :

“Claims by a dissident Soviet scientist that hundreds of people died in a nuclear catastrophe in the Soviet Union in 1958 were dismissed as “pure science fiction” yesterday by Sir John Hill, chairman of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority.

In an interview with the Press Association, Sir John described the allegations of Dr. Zhores Medvedev as “rubbish” and added: “I think this is a figment of the imagination.”

Dr. Medvedev, a biochemist, claimed in an article in the New Scientist that nuclear waste which was buried near the surface in the Urals blew up “like a volcano” in 1958. The resulting radioactive cloud spread across hundreds of miles and thousands of people became afflicted by radiation sickness.

Sir John said that while the Russians probably did bury low-level waste, as did Britain and other countries, “this sort of waste has a very, very low activity and could not possibly give that sort of explosion.”

Even if the Russians buried high-level waste – and Sir John did not believe they did, as they followed safety standards similar to those in other countries – “it could not give that sort of explosion, nuclear or thermal.” (ibid pp 5,6.)

Medvedev did not have access to the top secret Soviet documents which would either plainly prove or refute his published information. His 1979 book explains that Soviet secrecy meant the information on the environmental pollution which resulted from the 1957-58 accident in the Urals would not be plainly available. However, the consequences were reported in internationally published papers written by Soviet scientists. Medvedev states that the information is given false attributes in these papers. That is, the area studied and the nature of the contamination were deliberately falsified to conceal the disaster. The contamination was claimed to be “experimental” in these papers, deliberate studies for the sake of methodical, academic learning. The actual accident, the actual area affected never being mentioned. The vast bulk of the 1979 book by Medvedev is a discussion of such Soviet writings.

Today it can be clearly seen that the USSR reported a major consequence of the Mayak disasters in the Urals in 1971 via the book “Radiation Sickness in Man” which describes both acute and chronic variants of radiation sickness.

Today it can be clearly seen that the West received this information and republished it in the USA on a limited research basis in 1973. The publisher of the US edition of the work was the US Atomic Energy Commission.

In the same year British, American and other Western nuclear authorities came down like a ton of bricks in their condemnation of Medvedev and his disclosures.

Today the Urals Research Center for Radiation Medicine websites state that “Since 1955 Urals Research Center for Radiation Medicine (URCRM) has been providing health services for the population affected by low dose rate radiation exposure due to radiation accidents at the Mayak Production Association (Mayak PA) (discharges of radioactive wastes into the Techa River, explosion of the radioactive waste storage and formation of the East Urals Radioactive Trace (EURT), etc.) and has been conducting research to provide radiation safety for the population.”

In the period from 1955 through to current time, the cause of truth and justice has not been served in fact by Western governments which continue, effectively, to rely on an ideologically motivated concept of the components and variants of radiation sickness.

The existence of acute radiation sickness does not in fact preclude a chronic variant. Yet this claimed exclusion of one by the other variant, effectively, is what has been maintained by Western governments since 1945.

In this context, Western medico-legal context, dose is used as tool by the legal defense to the cost of the plaintiffs.

Indeed one of the barriers at the current time to the inclusion of Chronic Radiation Sickness into the Western medical lexicon is the deliberations of ICRP into how much to raise the qualifying annual dose (and dose rate) in order to permit a legal diagnosis of Chronic Radiation Syndrome.

The people of the world would be well advised to command their governments to go with precedents established by Japanese doctors in 1945.

Map of the The East Urals Radioactive Trace (EURT)
Large areas with agriculture and rural settlements were contaminated to a high degree necessitating the development and implementation of various countermeasures to mitigate the consequences of the accident.” Source: NRPA Bulletin 8.07, Statens stralevern, Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority at http://www.nrpa.no/dav/397736ba75.pdf